Thursday, March 30, 2017

Book Brief: Shaper by Christine Danse

Synopsis

Nameless and without an identity, she wakes on the streets of Shapertown, an abandoned city that defies the laws of physics. She’s fleeing a threat she can’t remember. One woman holds the key to unlocking her memories and the dangerous truth: She is the threat.

Cheryl’s Book Brief

It’s very difficult to create and people a new world, complete with a corrupt and evil government, an established resistance, a population living in fear and the human aspect of interpersonal relationships, all within a short novella.

The book is very easy to read, and avoids the temptation to become preachy, although it skates close at times, and I think it has to, given how short it is.

The idea of people able to manipulate themselves and their environment with their minds is not new, but there’s something about Shapers, people who have not so much developed powers but absorbed them from a world where reality works very differently, that feels new. What isn’t new, is the way they’re feared and exploited.

Lark begins with no memory but the urge to run. When she’s found by the resistance she should feel safe, but she doesn’t. Everything feels wrong, especially when she meets the enigmatic Natalia. Although she’s desperate to recover her memories, she’s also resistant, terrified of what lies in the closed off recessed of her mind. What she remembers when the veil clears is so terrifying she thinks the only way out is death. Natalia convinces her to try something that might well kill her anyway.

There’s plenty of excitement and suspense. A good part of the book involves walking down corridors, and up and down stairs. It was a little frustrating to begin with, but then I began to see it as kind of a metaphor or echo of what’s going on inside Lark’s head.

All in all, it was a very satisfying read and wasn’t rushed in the way many sci fi shorts are, although understandably there were areas that could have done with expansion. It thoroughly deserves 4 stars. I think if it was a longer book, with some of the themes expanded and allowed to unfold more slowly it would have had a 4.5*.